


Keeping Company

by tabaqui



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 05:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3756073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabaqui/pseuds/tabaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared is a photographer of the rich, wanna-be-famous, and privileged of New York.  Jensen seems to date a lot of them.  A not-what-you-were-expecting kinda escort fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Company

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for without_me, for a fandom benefit auction. The prompt wanted one of the Js to be an escort, one to be - whatever else. I didn't follow it 100 percent...but I think you'll enjoy. :)

_Śaktiśālī Nadī_ = 'mighty river'  
_Dādā Nadī_ = Grandfather Nadī  
(Hindi)

 

Jensen’s phone buzzed quietly on the dresser-top and he picked it up, swiping the screen. The text said ‘ _Downstairs_ ’, and Jensen turned the screen off and tucked the phone into his suit pocket. He made a last adjustment to the chocolate-brown tie he wore and then strode out of his bedroom and out of his apartment. The elevator took him down five floors, and he walked out of the lobby of his building into an evening that was just sinking into blue dusk, the air mild. The last of summer still lingered, but autumn was creeping in. 

He slid into the sleek black town car that waited by the curb and settled into the leather seat.

“Alice McCauley?” the driver asked.

“You got it.” It would take at least forty-five minutes to get uptown, so Jensen took his phone out of his pocket as the car pulled smoothly away. He opened up his schedule and started reading emails, plotting out his jobs for the next couple of weeks. The Boston Ballet was in town, among other things, so he was going to be pretty booked. Also, sick of the ballet by the end of the month.

They pulled up outside of Alice’s building almost fifty minutes later, and Jensen went inside - nodding to the doorman - and up to the third floor almost at a jog. Alice had the whole of that floor, and he smoothed his tie and then his hair before ringing the solitary doorbell. Dawkins opened the door a moment later, an older man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.

“Mr. Ackles,” he said gravely.

“Dawkins. How are you?” Jensen asked, stepping onto the tessellated floor of the foyer. It was done in hand-painted Italian tiles, rich sunset colors that contrasted nicely with the pale cream walls and gilt-framed paintings. 

“Very well, thank you.” Dawkins shut the door gently. “Mrs. McCauley is waiting.”

“Jensen!” Jensen looked up to see Alice McCauley poised at the head of the stairs. Her sleek dress was beaded all over in shimmering waves of rust, earth and cinnamon, and diamond-embedded gold jewelry adorned her hands, wrists, neck and ears. She was seventy if she was a day, coiffed and polished and only just recently beginning to stoop, just a little.

“There she is,” Jensen said, smiling, as Alice swanned down the stairs, her bright-silver head held high. “You look amazing, as usual,” Jensen added, meeting her at the foot of the stairs. Alice laughed softly, stretching up while Jensen bent down, kissing her cheek and being kissed in return.

“Flatterer. It’s all in the lighting. Oh! Handkerchief.” Jensen pulled a square of ironed, white linen from an inside pocket and handed it to Alice, who dabbed at his cheek, cleaning away a smudge of coppery lipstick. “Now you’re perfect.”

Jensen tucked the handkerchief away while Alice stepped toward Dawkins and turned her back to him, letting him drape a fur-edged wrap around her thin shoulders.

“I hope you enjoy your evening, Mrs. McCauley,” Dawkins said, with a little bow.

“I know I shall, with this delightful young man on my arm. Thank you, Dawkins. Good night.”

“Good night, madam.”

Jensen offered his arm and Alice took it, squeezing lightly. “I was thinking a cocktail before the the show?”

“I think that would be delightful,” Jensen said, escorting her out and down and out again, and into the waiting car. 

When he got home that night, after three a.m., yawning and a little tipsy, he found the three-hundred dollar tip Alice had tucked into the back pocket of his slacks. It made the two hours of weird, angular ballet he’d sat through almost worth it.

In the next two weeks, he saw that damn ballet nine more times. The ballet, an opera, two symphonies and one off-Broadway revival of Speed-the-Plow, set, bizarrely, in a post-apocalyptic bunker with the ‘action’ taking place between attacks of off-stage ‘radiation mutants’ and on-stage bouts of radiation-induced illness. It was...well, it was a fucking mess, and Jensen knew the only reason he was there was because it was a ‘be seen at’ kind of thing, the brainchild and star of the show being Hollywood’s newest ‘it’ guy.

Jensen made sure his schedule was full every night the horrible thing was running. Not surprisingly, it closed early. 

 

By the end of the month, his school fund had almost eight grand in it, and he was up one Cartier watch he'd love to pawn. He wore it when he made the trek over to SoHo. His Grandma Adele had lived there ever since the place had been known as Hell's Hundred Acres, first in a mean little apartment above her dad's decorative sheet metal business and then, later, in the entire fifth floor of the building as people had moved out, artists had moved in, and Grandma Adele had snagged herself a rich Upper East Side wanna-be boho artist who had, conveniently, died at the zenith of his less-than-fascinating career, making the reams of weird, muddy paintings and listing sculpture he'd left behind, ironically, worth a mint.

Grandma Adele hadn't ever left those late-seventies years, at least in sensibility and style. She swanned around her loft in flowing 'gypsy' costumes and second-hand, crumbling kimonos, ranting about Art and Essential Experiences, and had, when he was eight and nine and ten, taken Jensen on day-long tours of other loft spaces, hole-in-the-wall studios and museums, and introduced him to both marijuana and debutantes. 

Jensen adored her, and Grandma Adele thought he was the most charming boy in all the world. It was a mutually satisfying arrangement. So Jensen made the trip to her loft twice a month, bringing the Sunday _New York Times_ and a mixed bag of bialys and bagels from Kossar's. Grandma said reading a real paper kept her wits sharp, and though Jensen would argue with her about the _Times_ being real, she certainly was sharp. Sharp enough to cut you, if you weren't careful.

Jensen, himself, would open up the Social Diary and a few other websites, work on his calendar, and tell Grandma about his many and varied 'dates'.

 

 

"Up and at 'em, Sunshine!" someone shouted, and Jared startled out of sleep, flailing wildly. He smacked his hand on the headboard, his elbow on the nightstand, and curled into a wounded ball in the middle of his bed, whimpering.

"Ow, ow, freakin' ow!"

"C'mon, you big baby," they said - _she_ said - and Jared felt the covers being inched down his ribs. He yelped, made a grab for the retreating edge, and missed.

"Hey! Naked, here!"

"Nothing I haven't seen, though I admit I wouldn't say no to another look," she said, and Jared finally figured out who _she_ was. He twisted onto his back, pawed his hair out of his eyes and glared at Kim Rhodes, the 'talent' he'd been assisting for the last three weeks. It felt like a lot longer.

"You're in my _bedroom_. _Why_ are you in my bedroom?"

"You gave me a key," Kim said. She strolled over to Jared's dresser and leaned there, idly stirring the mess of change, wadded receipts, bills, hair ties, socks and random cheap jewelry that was scattered over the top.

"That was for an emergency, and you were supposed to give my key _back_ ," Jared snarled half-heartedly. He was really not a 'woken loudly by rude, loud people' kind of person.

"You never said you wanted it back," Kim said. She held up a string of chunky, rainbow-colored beads, with a pendant cock and balls in tarnished pot-metal dangling from it, one impeccably groomed eyebrow going up.

"I went to Pride, I had a few too- No, wait, wait, timeout." Jared made a 'T' with his hands, still mostly flat on his back. "Once more - _why_ are you in my frigging _bedroom_?"

"Because we have a gaggle of New York's most eligible eighty-somethings to photograph in a flattering light, and that light is slipping away."

"Wha…? Oh _shit_. The fucking park thing."

"Yeah, the fucking park thing." Kim dropped the beads and leaned out to give Jared's mostly-uncovered foot a pat. "You got twenty minutes, cutie pie."

"Shit, shit, shit," Jared muttered, as Kim picked her way over crumpled laundry to the door. "I'm _gay_ , you know."

"Doesn't mean I can't look. And you're a looker, sugar," Kim tossed over her shoulder. "Chop chop!"

"Don't objectify me," Jared said, and Kim cackled from somewhere in the kitchen. Jared heaved himself into a sitting position and scrubbed his hands back through his hair, then staggered up and scooted across the hallway to his bathroom. Safely behind the closed door, he cranked on the shower and gave the groaning, exposed pipes a whack. 

He shot pictures for ' _Glitterati_ ', a tongue-in-cheek 'social register' kind of thing, showing who was doing what where, with whom, and how much it all cost. Since some wealthy Old Money paid for it, it wasn't _too_ snide, and they liked lots and lots of pictures, which meant Jared could actually afford to eat. 

Kim used her contacts from _Glitterati_ to write a blog that deconstructed trends, ripped pretentious 'new art' to shreds, and examined ugly, 'hip' fashion, with an occasional political piece thrown in for weight. So Jared shot a lot of people in fancy dress doing fairly boring things, or inexplicable things, or things that were a little horrifying, in retrospect, mostly because they inevitably came with a price tag that could feed a six-person family for a year. 

But it paid the bills.

It also generally happened at _night_ , so being up at the ungodly hour of eleven a.m. was pretty damn foreign to Jared. He had, in fact, only flopped into bed at about seven, after sitting up most of the night playing League of Legends online with his brother down in Texas and a couple other friends. Jared got paste on his toothbrush and stuck it into his mouth, and then opened the bathroom door.

"I hate you, you know!" he yelled.

"I brought you a breakfast bagel and a coffee the size of your head!" Kim yelled back.

Jared considered. "Maybe I won't kill you, then."

"Seventeen minutes, doll-face."

Jared groaned, then shut the door and climbed into the shower, groping for the bar of soap as he scrubbed his teeth. He hoped to God he could find his sunglasses before they left.

 

Central Park at one in the afternoon was bright, and breezy, and noisy. And _chilly_ , unseasonably so, or at least it felt that way to Jared. Hunched down into his inadequate jacket, he glared balefully through his sunglasses at the people milling around the...plaque, or whatever the hell it was they were dedicating. The women looked cozy in mink, fox and probably kitten, for all Jared knew, and the men were dapper in tailored wool with baby-freakin'-llama scarves, or whatever, wrapped and tucked artfully around their necks. They looked soft, and Jared wanted one in a sullen, 'guess I'll go eat worms' kind of way. Probably cost as much as his rent for a month.

He'd come up from Texas three months ago, and hadn't yet actually gotten around to getting a decent winter coat. He said it was because it was hard to find stuff in his size, and he hadn't really had the money, before. Kim said he was in denial that he wasn't living down in the land of the gimme hat and shit-kicker boots anymore. It was possible she was right.

Jared sipped the last of his coffee and grimaced at the lukewarm liquid. He tossed the cup in a nearby bin and shoved his hands into his pockets. 

"You ready?" Kim asked, materializing at his side like some kind of urban elf. She was in black jeans and tall, black boots, with a green silk tank under a snug leather jacket in a patchwork of browns and golds. Her black hair was pixie-cut and streaked with red, today, and her makeup made her eyes look tilted and enormous, like a cat's. Her red lips were dusted with pink sugar crystals. "The buffet's awesome," she added, noticing Jared's stare.

"There's a _buffet_?" Jared twisted around to look - rule number one, always eat all the free food you can choke down - but Kim grabbed his arm and propelled him forward. 

"Time for prom pictures," she snarked, and Jared sighed. The milling crowd _was_ starting to form up in some kind of deliberate way, and the assembled press were jostling for position in the roped-off area they'd been allotted. In that, at least, Jared's height worked to his advantage; he didn't necessarily have to be right up front to get a good shot, and he rarely had to work around intrusive heads or shoulders. Plus, it kept him further away from the kind of elbow-to-the-kidney scramble that happened all too often.

"The ones by the plaque are the main sponsors, and the one with the dead seal on her back is the big money. Get some good ones of them." Jared nodded, turning his camera on and fiddling with the settings as Kim continued. "Who _I_ want are Lord and Lady Thing in the matching yak skins, the one with the crown jewels, and Cruella DeVille and holy _fuck_ , her arm candy. Got it?"

"Got it," Jared said, shooting away. He paused for a moment, scanning the crowd for the people Kim had pointed out. Lord and Lady Thing were indeed wearing coats that looked like skinned yaks, all weird coarse hair in a dead dull brown. Ugliest coats Jared had ever seen. Crown Jewels was wearing enough diamonds to choke a horse (pretty gauche for a daytime event, Jared thought), her lacquered blonde hair practically glowing in the sunlight. Cruella DeVille was tall and thin and wearing what looked like about five thousand fluffy black or white mice, tiny pom poms of fur all over her, weirdly puffy. Arm Candy….

"Holy fuck," Jared whispered, and lifted his camera on reflex. Arm Candy was more like Gourmet Artisanal Imported White Chocolate Ganache With Infused Essence of Butterfly. Or something equally lush, rare, and damn expensive.

Jared zoomed in on Arm Candy and shot a series of pictures as the man listened to Cruella, nodding and smiling, and then leaning in to give her seamed cheek a dry kiss. Then he strolled away, heading for the small bar set up near the buffet.

Jared eeled his way out of the press crowd and strode rapidly to the U of buffet tables set up under a gauzy canopy. He grabbed a plate - a real china plate, jeez - and loaded it up with the least-messy _hors d'oeuvres_ offered. Arm Candy was waiting patiently by the bar, looking idly out over the slope of autumn-pale grass to Harlem Meer, whose rippling surface reflected the already turning leaves of beech and oak.

Jared wandered in his direction, taking in the details he'd been too distracted to notice from behind his camera. Arm Candy had medium-brown hair, tidily cut and combed in a slightly old-fashioned style, side-parted and swept to the left, with a loose wave over his forehead; pale-tan skin a little flushed from the chill; long lashes; full lips; and broad shoulders under a perfectly tailored, black wool coat.

Staring, Jared stumbled over a tussock of grass, his camera thumping against his chest and his camera bag slipping off his shoulder, jolting his arm. He almost lost the plate.

" _Shit_!" Arm Candy looked over, eyebrows lifting in surprise. "Gotta save the food," Jared said, grinning nervously. Arm Candy looked down at the loaded plate and then back up at Jared, mouth pursing slightly. The soft-looking green and gold scarf wound around his throat made his green eyes practically glow. 

"I mean, free food, can't let it go to waste," Jared babbled. To shut himself up, he grabbed a stuffed button-mushroom cap and shoved it into his mouth, biting down. Ham and gouda cheese the approximate temperature of the sun exploded across his tongue and Jared almost choked. " _Ow_ , fuck, ow, ow, _hot_ , ow!" He lurched away, mouth hanging open, panting in an attempt to cool off his burning mouthful, and he could have sworn he heard a snort of amusement (amusement was better than disgust!) from Arm Candy.

Spotting a bin by the buffet, he swooped down and let the half-masticated mess fall down into random, assorted trash. "Jesus!" He avoided the gimlet stare the server behind the crab cakes was giving him and span around. Arm Candy was striding away, two drinks in hand, and Jared sagged, deflating. He took a couple of hesitant steps after him and then stopped.

"You're kind of a dork," the bartender said, and Jared made a face at her.

"Can I ge' some ice wa'er? I 'ink I 'eared my 'aste buds off." She rolled her eyes, but assembled a cup of ice and water and handed it over, decorating it with little red cocktail straws and a wedge of lemon. Jared dug a couple of crumpled dollars out of his pocket and stuffed them in the tip jar, and then took the water gratefully, slurping down a huge mouthful.

"'Anks, uh...Brenda," Jared said, reading her name tag. 

Brenda smirked. "Try not to hurt yourself."

Jared wandered back toward the crowd, sipping his water and scanning faces for Arm Candy, who was temporarily out of sight. He wasn't prepared for Kim to pounce from the shadows of the very fat reporter from the _Daily News_ and snatch the plate out of his hand. 

"Holy crap!"

"You're supposed to be taking pictures, not stuffing your face."

" _You_ ate!"

"I can multi-task. Get in there and get shooting, sweet cheeks," Kim ordered, lifting one of the stuffed mushrooms off the plate and giving it a delicate sniff.

Jared decided not to tell her it was stuffed with lava and instead got a piece of ice out of his cup and into his mouth. He handed his water to Kim and strode away toward the crowd, and was rewarded by a yelp of pain and muffled cursing behind him. Cracking the ice in his teeth and grinning wide, he lifted his camera up and started shooting.

Jared managed to get the rest of his shots as well as at least thirty random pictures of Arm Candy, and only got caught twice. He considered that fair compensation for not being able to taste anything for the rest of the day.

 

Two weeks later - and only one other daytime shoot, thank fuck - Jared had almost 4 gigs of photos of Arm Candy. It made him feel slightly dirty, but, then again, they'd all been taken on the _job_ , at public places during public events. Arm Candy was a public person, apparently. Very public.

And Jared wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, what Arm Candy did with his time was absolutely no fucking business of Jared's, and he had every right to be out on the town with a dozen different people in a week. It was even kinda...sexy, that so many people wanted him, and that he was so...available. But, on the other hand, Arm Candy seemed to specialize in - maybe prefer? - woman (and no few men) who were _well_ into what could be generously called their 'golden years'. 

In fact, the only time Jared had seen Arm Candy with anyone under the age of fifty was when his...date...had hosted a skating party (had bought out the entire rink, actually) at Brookfield Place. Arm Candy had been happily skating with about six ten year old girls who were hanging off him and giggling hysterically, and Jared had kinda wanted to join them.

Though he'd hoped he could keep his own hysterical giggles to a minimum.

Jared was kind of starting to think, in a sad, fatalistic, and totally unfounded way, that if he _did_ get up close and personal with Arm Candy, he'd be told kindly but firmly that Jared was just too _young_. And that was a really depressing thought. And when Jared got depressed, he ate.

Currently, Jared was elbow-deep in a jumbo-sized bag of pork rinds. He'd already decimated two tubes of Ritz crackers with a package of pepperoni and a can of Easy Cheese, assorted gummy insects, arachnids, and _Carcharodon carcharias_ , half a box of Swiss Rolls and almost all of a two liter bottle of Coke. His next move would _probably_ be, he thought glumly, to throw up. The pork rinds didn't seem to be settling his stomach like he'd hoped. Maybe that half tub of slightly freezer-burned Salty Caramel ice cream…?

Jared was sort of nodding off in a carbohydrate daze when his door slammed open, startling him so hard that he flung the pork rinds halfway across the room, leaving an arc of greasy pig skin from couch to Xbox.

"Holy _fuck_ , what is wrong with you?!" Jared snarled, and Kim just grinned at him.

"You look like shit. Get up, get showered, and get dressed. You've got about one hour to get to the MOMA and meet Arm Candy in person."

"What do you-? Do _what_? What the fuck are you-?"

" _Jared_ ," Kim said, and Jared finally realized that instead of her usual cross between punk, biker and Sylvian warrior attire, Kim was wearing a slinky red dress and suede heels, a little gold-mesh purse dangling from one bare arm. "If you think I haven't noticed you stalking that pretty boy all over New York for the past two weeks, you've got another think coming. You're painfully fucking _obvious_ , cupcake."

Jared clutched a pillow nervously to his suddenly-roiling stomach. "I- Do you-? Do you think he...noticed?"

"Would you just go wash away your wildlife? Fuck's sake. It's that charity thing tonight, anybody can attend and bid on...stuff, I dunno, found-object dildos or something, and I know for a _fact_ that Cruella DeVille's gonna be there. And that means _Arm Candy_ is gonna be there, and, if you play your cards right, you can actually do more than embarrass the fuck out of yourself by stumbling into a potted plant and squashing the damn thing."

"That wasn't- I was pushed, there were people-"

"Move it or lose it, sugar," Kim said. She flicked a pork rind off the couch with a lacquered nail and sauntered toward the kitchen. "You got any beer?"

"Christ, you're a pain." Jared let his head fall back on the couch for a moment. "Do you really think I could-? That he'd-?"

" _Jared_ ," Kim said again, this time with an edge of real exasperation. "Bunty is down in the Town Car. He's gonna take you to the MOMA, and then he and I are going to go have some ridiculously over-priced pasta and hopefully wall-banging sex." Bunty was the guy who kept Kim's computer working and her blog pretty; he looked like a cross between Harrison Ford and a brick wall. Kim emerged from the kitchen with an open beer in one hand and a Ritz cracker in the other. "So would you get that tight little ass in gear, please, before I die of blue balls?"

"Classy, too, you're so _fucking_ classy," Jared muttered, but he hauled himself upright and shuffled off to the bathroom. Maybe he _could_ actually meet Arm Candy. Maybe he wouldn't do anything incredibly stupid or embarrassing. Maybe Arm Candy would _like_ him. "Maybe I'm outta my fucking mind," Jared said to the mirror, and hastily cranked the shower on when Kim yelled down the hall.

"Get going or I'll come in there and scrub you down myself!"

Twenty minutes later, Jared was wiggling with some embarrassment into a pair of ass-hugging slacks that Kim had unearthed from his closet and practically thrown at him. While he'd showered, she's also, apparently, found a miraculously un-wrinkled button up shirt and his wallet, that he'd been looking for for two days. Jared felt a moment's pride when he managed to find his own socks, quickly squashed when Kim pointed out they were two different colors.

Finally dressed, brushed, walleted, jacketed, and bolstered by a quick couple of puffs on a joint (Bunty) and a double-thumbs up (Kim), Jared found himself in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art, staring dazedly up at Salvador Dali's _Persistence of Memory_ , a painting he'd always hated. Something about it just made his skin itch.

"They say it has...' _meticulous verisimilitude_ '," a voice murmured, and Jared snorted. 

"It's creepy."

"Is that your professional opinion?" The voice was amused and slightly rough, warm, and Jared turned with an automatic smile. 

"Nah, just- _shit_."

" _Shit_ seems pretty strong," Arm Candy said, eyebrows up and his mouth curling, ever so slightly, into a smile, and Jared snapped his mouth shut with a clack of teeth.

"No, I mean- Not the _Dali_ , I mean- Well, fuck."

Arm Candy laughed. _Really_ laughed; tipped his head back and opened his mouth and just laughed, and it was amazing. "Are you always this articulate?"

"Are you always this gorgeous?" Jared shot back, and then felt his eyes going wide in shock. "I'm sorry! Hell's fuckin' bells."

Arm Candy laughed again, a little quieter, and put his hand out, buffeting Jared's shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. Don't apologize for calling me gorgeous." He grinned at Jared, and Jared couldn't help it, he grinned right back. Impossibly, Arm Candy grinned _wider_ , his green eyes sparkling.

"Damn, you've got dimples."

"And you've got...fucking...everything," Jared said, and then wondered if he could fling himself down the stairs or something because _Jesus_.

But Arm Candy just laughed, again, throwing his head back, full-throated and unselfconscious. "You'd know, wouldn't you? Got enough pictures of me?"

"Oh, God, oh GodohGod." Jared ran his fingers back through his hair and gripped it, giving it a little tug in the hope that the sting would get his brain going again. "I'm so sorry. I'm _so_ sorry, I swear I am not Glenn Close, I dunno what the hell came over me, I would _never_ -"

"Nah, hey, it's fine. Seriously," Arm Candy added, when Jared shook his head with his hands, tufts of it sticking out between his fingers. "I was just...doing my thing, and you were doing _your_ thing, and there were pictures. You didn't camp out on my balcony or anything."

"Do you have a balcony? Wait, not important." Jared did his best to smooth his hair back down into something semi-respectable. "Um. Look. I'm sorry I've been some kind of creepy-stalker-spaz guy, and I swear I'm not usually this, uh…." Jared flung his hands around in an attempt to illustrate just _what_ he was, and Arm Candy snorted.

"Yeah, I get it, and it's totally okay. I mean, it's really kinda flattering. And you haven't even used your press contacts to dig up private dirt on me and try to blackmail me for sexual favors…have you?" 

“I would never!” Jared sputtered, hoping his wide-eyed innocent look would totally cover the fact that he’d actually almost done that. Except not to blackmail, just to, you know...know.

“Okay, sure,” Arm Candy said, and Jared took a very deep breath and shut his eyes.

“I am totally sorry for stalking you and being a creeper and taking pictures of you even though it’s my job, and I would really like to take you out for coffee or something.” Jared breathed in again and opened his eyes, and Arm Candy was staring at him, a kind of bemused expression on his face. Was he thinking? Was that his ‘omg, this guy is an idiot!’ face? His ‘how in hell do I shake this loser?’ face? “Shit, I’m sor-”

“No! No, no, it’s okay, um. I only got about a quarter of that. You talked at kind of...super-sonic speeds, there.”

“Oh. I did? Well, fuck, okay, listen-”

Arm Candy was looking past Jared, a little frown on his face, and Jared felt his belly swoop in defeat. This was it. The Brush Off (™). Next time he saw Arm Candy, he’d probably have a bodyguard or something.

“The auction starts in about twenty minutes, and I have to be back with Delia by then.” Arm Candy looked around, a little nervously, and leaned in closer. Jared automatically leaned in as well. Arm Candy smelled like...spice and couch cuddles and two-point-three kids and a dog. Probably a Labradoodle or something. Or maybe a German Shepherd. Something big and goofy, anyway, that would run around and tangle the leash around them like _101 Dalmatians_ and make their perfect, Arm Candy kids laugh and laugh and laugh.

“What?” Jared said. “Ow!” Because Arm Candy had whacked him on the back of the head.

“I _said_ , you giant dork, I have a key-card that’ll get us into any office here, and if you don’t come with me _right now_ and let me suck you dry, I’m never letting you take another picture of me.”

“...You said that?” Jared gaped, and Arm Candy rolled his eyes, grabbed a fistful of Jared’s shirt and started walking, towing Jared along behind him like a stilt-legged balloon. 

“Yes, I said that. Jesus. The stalking goes both ways. Jared T. Padalecki who works for _Glitterati_ and recently relocated from Austin, Texas.”

“How’d you know that?” Jared squeaked, and Arm Candy pulled a key-card out of an inner pocket and opened a door. Inside was a cluttered desk, a crammed-full book shelf and a weirdly articulated sculpture that almost took Jared’s head off. Arm Candy cursed fluently and locked the door.

Pale-orange street light came in through open Venetian blinds and Arm Candy, Jared mused, looked good even in _that_ unflattering light. He was also taking off his pants, having stepped out of his immaculate, polished shoes. He had little black elastic garters holding up his socks and Jesus fuck, but Jared thought they were _sexy_.

“Holy fuck. I thought - you were just gonna - you’re gonna get naked?”

“Do you have any idea how often they clean in here?” Arm Candy asked, and Jared shook his head. “Neither do I, and this suit cost like a month’s rent.” Arm Candy shed his jacket and draped it neatly over the desk chair and then lifted his hands to his tie.

“No!” Jared lurched forward and stopped him. “Leave it on? Please?” Arm Candy’s hands were warm and a little callused and Jesus, he really did smell _good_ and Jared grabbed the tie and hauled him up for a long, hard kiss. “Oh, God,” Jared groaned, pulling back a half-inch. “You even _taste_ good. Are you real? Oh my _God_!” Jared went up on his toes as Arm Candy’s warm, callused hand cupped Jared’s half-hard dick.

“Jesus, keep it down,” Arm Candy hissed, and Jared nodded frantically.

“Sorry, sorry, I- Oh, oh _fuck_ , Jesus, oh my God-” 

Arm Candy looked up from where he’d sunk down, working open Jared’s belt and fly. “Wow. Do you need a gag? Should I gag you? Do you like that kind of thing?”

“Yes. No. I have no fucking idea. What?”

Arm Candy chuckled softly and then with a little tug and lift got Jared’s cock out of his boxer-briefs. “Guess we’ll find out if you can’t keep it down, huh?” he said. Then he licked up the underside of the shaft and sucked the head of Jared’s cock into his mouth.

“Yeah, sure, anything, we’ll- Oooh, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ \- Arm Candy, Jesus!” The suction stopped.

“What did you call me?”

“I… have no idea. I’m sorry? What do you want me to call you?” Jared was half-tangled in the weird sculpture and something was poking him ferociously just under his shoulder blade, and Arm Candy was looking up at him with his starched-white dress shirt and rich purple tie and the light all slashed across his face from the blinds. He looked like some kind of high-end wet-dream art shoot and Jared could not _believe_ he was being asked to be articulate.

Or think.

For fuck’s sake.

“You called me Arm Candy,” Arm Candy said, and Jared twitched in horror. 

“ _Shit_ , sorry, sorry, I just- I have- Uh. Christ.”

Arm Candy took another lick, like Jared was a lollipop, and Jared flailed a little, trying not to muss his perfect hair or smudge his perfect shirt. He ended up smacking his hand into a joint of the sculpture and yelping. Jesus, was it made of _razors_? 

“I’m Jensen. Jensen R. Ackles. New Yorker.” He grinned, and Jared grinned back, and then he opened his mouth and swallowed Jared right down, and Jared ended up totally fucking up that perfect, perfect hair.

He also got some kind of weird, glittery dust on his slacks when he returned the favor, but it didn’t matter, because _Jensen_ had pulled his hair and moaned like a porn star and Jared had got to feel up his strong, slightly bowed legs and snap his garters a little.

Which had made Jensen yelp in surprise and then snort inelegantly, pawing at Jared’s shoulders, and Jared had giggle-snorted all over Jensen’s dick but, fuck it. They both got off and managed to emerge from the office looking mostly respectable. 

Well, Jensen did. Jared had sex-hair for sure, and a dazed grin on his face that wouldn’t go away even after Jensen had programed his phone number into Jared’s phone and left to deal with the auction and Delia and...whatever. 

 

"You're an escort," Jared blurted, sprawled in Jensen's apartment a week later, mostly naked and totally blissed out. Jensen, who _was_ totally naked and was also half-heartedly dabbing at a smear of come on his hipbone, stopped dabbing and _looked_ at Jared.

"What?"

"I figured it out! You're always going on these 'dates' -" Jared made sloppy air quotes "- with older women. And men. Fancy old people, who take you to fancy old-people...places. And things." Jared yawned, and Jensen tossed the shirt (my shirt! That was my shirt! Jared thought) away toward the laundry area. He rolled over and half-crawled, half-squirmed up Jared's body, digging in with elbows and knees in several tender places. Jared whined and yanked him all the way up, wrapping his arms around him and holding him still.

"You figured it out, huh? Took you long enough," Jensen said, and Jared felt his eyes go wide.

"Huh? You mean you are?"

"Duh. You just said."

"But I was kidding! I thought you- I thought-"

Jensen reared up a little, squishing Jared's limp cock with his thigh and Jared hissed and adjusted them both. Jensen was staring at him. "Do you have a _problem_ with that, Jared?"

"Uh. No?" Jensen's eyebrow went up. "No! No, I do not. It's not my business. It's totally not- I mean, no, I don't care who you- Do you-? How do you...do that?"

"Do what?" Jensen asked. He craned around and spotted his phone and stretched to get it, clicking the button and wincing at the sudden glow in the gloomy room. Jared shut his eyes.

"How do you...um...get it, you know...up? With the old people? I mean, they're perfectly nice people. Delia's awesome. I just...I don't think I could actually get it up with her."

"You're gay, Jared," Jensen said, thumbs moving as he texted someone. Jared could feel the flex of Jensen's forearms through his chest.

"Yes. But you escort guys, too, and they're all kinda… Well, not Crypt Keeper, I mean, that one guy, wow, total Idris Elba in twenty years, _damn_. But still…."

Jensen stopped texting and his fingers combed back through Jared's damp hair, and Jared opened his eyes. Jensen was smiling. "You actually think I have sex with them. You actually think I have sex with six or eight _sexa-_ and _septua-_ and _octo-_ genarians _every week_."

"Don't you? Do you? What are sexa-septua-octo-gens?"

"Old people, Jared. Senior citizens. _Geezers_." Jensen was laughing now, and it vibrated pleasantly all through Jared, and Jared couldn't help grinning back. "And oh my fucking God, Kim is gonna die." Jensen rolled off Jared and climbed unsteadily to his feet. He and Jared had been lying cozily in the nest of embroidered pillows and throws and cushions that filled the weird alcove off Jensen's bedroom. He said Grandma Adele called it his 'Reflection Nook'. He was supposed to chant 'ohm' and meditate in there or something.

Jared called it the Sex Nest.

"Wait, Kim? Kim _Rhodes_? How do you know Kim?" Jared asked, getting his elbows under him and sitting up. Jensen was kicking their clothing - most of it wet, because it had been pouring down buckets when they'd made their mad dash from diner to here - into his half-open closet, where the washer-dryer combo was.

"Her dad is Śaktiśālī Nadī Rhodes? Does those weird sculptures that you got impaled on at the MOMA?" Jensen went over to the window by the bed and flung the curtains open. The sky beyond was a patchwork of blues and scudding grey clouds, and the early-afternoon light made Jared groan and Jensen grin. Jensen turned around and started kicking scattered cushions and throws back into the nook, pelting Jared with the occasional gypsy-boho-tribal what-the-fuck-ever embroidered throw pillow. They were all hard as rocks, with little beads and bits of mirror stitched to them.

"His name is _what_? He did?"

"Śaktiśālī. Nadī. It's Hindi. He named himself that at Woodstock or something and then went on a pilgrimage to India to find his muse. Took a lot of LSD and irritated the monks or whatever at some temple until they threw him out. That's when he came back here and met Grandma Adele at a 'be-in' or something. They were a thing for a while." 

Jensen paused in his impromptu tidying, looking contemplatively at a very large, very ugly painting of what might possibly be horses, if you were on a lot of illegal drugs. "I remember taking bubble baths with Kim."

" _What_?" Jared squawked, and Jensen tipped his head back, laughing. 

"Do you seriously think I just _happened_ to be at the MOMA at that exact moment and have that card key and not be totally freaked out that my possibly-psycho stalker was right there?"

"I, uh..." Jared got up onto his knees and leaned back a little to peel his still-damp socks off. There just hadn't been _time_ \- Wait. "You didn't? Jensen-?"

" _Arm Candy_ ," Jensen said, with relish, and Jared groaned. "Kim told me that night. She told me _all about_ your adorably clueless self and your adorable crush and your secret stash of pictures and your carb binge of doom."

"She did? Fuckin' gonna kill her."

"Yeah, I figured," Jensen said. He walked to the other side of the bedroom and opened more curtains, rummaged a stick of incense out of a drawer and lit it, and then opened a window. "C'mon, you need to get up and get in the shower with me. We've got exactly half an hour before Kim and Dādā Nadī and Grandma Adele get here for brunch."

" _What? Here?_ They're coming _here_? You call him _Dādā Nadī?_ "

"He insists." Jensen was grinning so hard it looked like it might hurt, and Jared couldn't help himself, he had to grin back. Had to _laugh_ , because wasn't this just his life?

"Wait. You never said- You really _don't_ sleep with your dates?" Jared said, getting to his feet and reeling out of the nook, tripping over pillows and getting tangled in a tie-dyed throw. Apparently Grandma Adele had contributed to the bulk of decorations and furnishings in Jensen's apartment.

Jensen grabbed Jared's arm and hauled him to stable ground, kicking the throw back into the heap and wrapping his arms around Jared's waist, pressing up close. "No, you incredible dork. I don't sleep with them. I just - escort them. Half of them know Grandma Adele and they were always complaining about how other escort places would send guys who didn't know anything about art or were too 'fast' or tried to get extra tips for stuff. I needed money for school, and they needed...arm candy."

Jensen grinned, and Jared grinned back, then swooped down for a kiss that turned into a long, long grope that ended abruptly when the door to Jensen's apartment swung open, banging into the wall, and Grandma Adele marched in, trailing Dādā Nadī (bald pate, monk-like fringe of greying locks, tidy goatee, half a ton of clashing silver and gold bangle bracelets and what appeared to be a purple floral mumu) and a smirking Kim. 

"Jensen! We brought _latkes_! It smells like sex in here!" Grandma Adele swept up in her riotously green-gold-orange-pink-white-yellow spangled caftan and gave Jensen a smacking kiss on the cheek. Jensen had his head buried in Jared's shoulder and was wheezing in highly inappropriate hysterical laughter.

"You must be Jared!" Grandma Adele seemed to speak in all exclamation points. She looked Jared up and down and gave him a firm slap on his very naked ass cheek. "Jensen said you were built like a brick shithouse! Kim! Stop smirking and put some coffee on! Boys, go shower, you're sticky!" Grandma Adele swept away toward the kitchen, holding her apparently sticky hand out dramatically while Kim followed her, bright red and giggling like a loon.

Dādā Nadī blinked at them both, a little smile on his round face, swaying ever so slightly. The unmistakable odors of patchouli and pot wafted off of him. " _Namaste_ ", he said, and Jared felt his own hysterical laughter welling up in him like a bright, yellow balloon.

"Oh, fuck. Hello. I mean, _Namaste_. Oh, holy shit. Jensen, hang on," Jared said. He bent his knees a little, got a good grip, and hoisted Jensen right up off his feet. Jensen yelped and Jared scuttled sideways, crab-like, toward the bathroom, Jensen clinging for dear life and laughing the whole way.

Inside, Jared dumped Jensen in the shower stall and spun the dial, sending down a cascade of frigid water. Jensen yelped again and flailed at Jared, grabbing an arm and yanking him under the spray as well. Jared shrieked and nearly went down on his ass and they both clung together under the gradually warming spray, panting.

"Jesus fuck, you almost killed me," Jensen said, and Jared snorted.

"Your _grandmother_ and your _Dādā Nadī_ just saw me naked! And my boss. Again."

Jensen giggled and then mastered himself, wiping water out of his eyes and looking up at Jared, little grin on his face. "Yeah. they did."

"You did that on purpose."

"Mostly." Jensen leaned up and kissed him, and Jared heaved a martyred sigh and kissed back. 

"You're kind of a jerk, Arm Candy," Jared said, getting the soap and rubbing it down Jensen's back.

"You're kind of a dork, psycho stalker," Jensen said back, and then they just had to kiss again. For quite a while. The _latkes_ were cold when they finally made it to the kitchen.


End file.
